Thursday, 16 June 2016

Guns and Amerikan Kultur, Revised Version

Blessed be the Second Amendment of the US Constitution. Your well regulated militia is on the job, defending America against bad guys, standing guard over your safety and freedom. Just what our Founding Fathers intended and our Founding Mothers would have agreed, if they had any say in the matter.What's that? Oh, you say the Second Amendment dates from a time when only single shot guns existed, like these:

You say that the Founding Fathers had no idea that the "well regulated militia" might be carrying semi-automatic weapons, like these:

All the better to protect you against the bad guys, my dears. And if everyone had one, we'd all be safer, you betcha. These beauties are dandy for shooting hordes of vermin, too, and for making a good first impression when entering a restaurant, bar, shop, school, etc. And you don't need big hands to operate one.Everyone knows that guns don't kill people. People kill people. That's why we send soldiers into battle unarmed or at most armed with spoons, which are also good to eat with.It is a fact that mass shootings are a mental health problem, not a gun problem. It's unfortunate that the US has more crazy people than other countries, but there you go.We always hear that countries with strict gun control have much fewer gun deaths than the US. Maybe, but they have a lot more spoon deaths. Spoons are much more dangerous than guns. In spite of the above facts, the uninformed will persist in blaming guns for piles of dead people. The best response is to comfort them with your thoughts and prayers, and remind them of the blessed protection afforded the US by Amendment 2, verse 2, as interpreted by the priests of the holy NRA. Look it up in the Bible.

Hmmm. Mental Health. The President diagnosed the recent Texas killings in the same way. May be. From my pov people who find themselves so unattached to others, incapable of empathy or compassion define the alienated person. I don't think alienation is listed on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as published by the American Psychiatric Association other than "Parental alienation", which, I believe, is a species of child abuse. (No psychiatrist I, this comes from googling.)So is "alienation" the "mental health problem" you're talkin about? And if so, should it be listed in DSM? Or does ones' alienation from other human beings provide fertile ground for motivation to kill simply because the targets are not you and you have no attachment to humans? We're all alienated from rats, so we kill them with ease. Is it the same? I think this is important because I suspect that alienation is more like a disease related to culture or society. Anger.

About Me

Following more than thirty years as a history professor, I am now doing freelance writing, editing, speaking, and consulting. I received my PhD. from
the University of Wisconsin-Madison and taught history at the College of
Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina from 1974 until 2008.

My most recent non-fiction work,
Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry (Cambridge and New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2011) has received excellent reviews and was a co-winner of the SHEAR
Prize (2012) for best book on the history of the early American republic.

I have reviewed manuscripts for journals and academic publishers and
have consulted or done research on various historical projects for individuals,educational television,and organizations, including most recently, Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Atlantic Studies, South Carolina Educational Television, and University of South Carolina Press.

I have recently completed a novel of the American Revolution entitled Garden of Liberty and am working on a second novel, about a London physician and the body snatching trade in the 1790's, tentatively entitled Wells of Death.

SKILLS: Writing, Editing, Researching, Consulting, Teaching, Public Speaking. AWARDS, PRIZES, HONORS: SHEAR Best Book Prize, Society of Historians of the Early American Republic, 2012, co-winner.Distinguished Professor, College of Charleston, 2002Governor’s Distinguished Professor, College of Charleston, 1998South Carolina Historical Association, Prize for Best Paper published in Proceedings of the South Carolina Historical Association, 1993-94Distinguished Teaching Award, College of Charleston, 1985

MAJOR PUBLICATIONS: Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Associate Editor, South Carolina Encyclopedia. Responsible for hundreds of entries on medicine and science, many of which I wrote myself. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2005.

Moonlight, Magnolias, and Madness: Insanity in South Carolina from the Colonial to the Progressive Eras. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.